| Summary/Abstract |
RUSSIAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS are going through what is probably their worst phase in the last 70 years. Diplomatic contacts are at a bare minimum. Dialogue on education, science, culture, sports, and humanitarian cooperation has been almost entirely cut off by the American side. Trade and economic ties have been fatally disrupted by a wave of sanctions. The anti-Russian hysteria in the American media and political circles in effect recreates the atmosphere of the times of the struggle against the "red threat." At the same time, readers may recall that in the USSR and the US of the early 1950s, memories of the recent alliance in the fight against the Axis countries were still alive, and the negative attitude toward the Soviet Union in American society was based on an ideological (anti-communist) foundation and did not transform into the banal and primitive Russophobia that we are witnessing today. It does not seem possible to pull the bilateral dialogue out of the steep nosedive brought on by Washington. Under the current circumstances, further decline appears almost irreversible.
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